Happy New Year 2016 Powerpoint Template
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2016 from TLC Creative.
Here is a full featured Happy New Year 2016 PowerPoint template. Credit to TLC staff designer Amber for the design and festive animation. This template is free for all to download and use! Enjoy! Download Here ↓(7.89MB)
See a short video of the PowerPoint template.
[KGVID]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/unnamed-file-1.mp4[/KGVID]
– Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint 2016 and the QAT (it doesn’t fit!)
I have been moving TLC Creative Services to Windows 10 and Office 2016 in small groups. The new OS and updated version of Office are stable and provide a great work environment (with a lot of customization of settings to be what I want!). One item I have not been able to figure out a solution for is how PowerPoint 2016 displays the QAT.
Here is my QAT with Office 2013 (captured last month) with PowerPoint full screen on a 1920×1080 resolution. There are 37 quick access buttons to make my design time more efficient. Note: The last button is close to the middle of the PowerPoint ribbon.
Now here is the exact same QAT, on the exact same resolution monitor and full screen app. The only change is a move to PowerPoint 2016. Note: The last button on my QAT is not visible, the QAT buttons are incredibly spread apart and now span the entire ribbon width – and the last few buttons do not even fit, they are cut off!
I do not have a solution (yet). I did think of the Touch Mode that adjusts the interface, but it does not affect the QAT, just the ribbon buttons. I will report back if (when) I find a QAT display solution.
– Troy @ TLC
The Pyramid Pie Chart
A few weeks ago, at The Presentation Summit in New Orleans, I was happily a part of the audience listening to Nigel Holmes give the opening General Session talk. Nigel is British, funny (in a British way), memorable (especially the vibrant blue rimmed glasses) and amazingly observant. In talking with Nigel later, he made it very clear that he is not claiming the below pie chart graphic as his, but I am giving him all the credit for weaving it into his talk since it was the first time I have seen it.
One of the TLC Creative designers recreated this amazing 3D perspective pie chart (from a photo I took of Nigel’s presentation) and it still makes me smile!
Feel free to download the TLC Creative version of this slide Here.
– Troy @ TLC
Presentations are Getting Bigger and Hard Drives are Getting Smaller!
We have been building up and optimizing a number of new presentation show computers. Standard spinning platter hard drives have been pretty much banished from all TLC Creative computers (far left silver drive). Everything has SSD hard drives because of the reliability and incredible performance boost (middle black drive – Samsung Evo series being my preferred), and we have these in every computer, designer and show, usually with a standard spinning 1TB drive for file storage.
But it took some time to figure out our newest set of show computers hard drive setup (Sager NP9700 series). They are spec’d with 256GB Samsung Evo Pro drives (again, my current preference), and these notebooks have 4 hard drive bays! But after looking everywhere, I could not find the drive. I was looking for the middle black drive and these are the first laptops I have that use the M.2 drive connector. The far right thing that looks like a stick of memory is also a 256GB Samsung Evo Pro drive (so the middle and right drives are the same specs)!
Just more amazing things to be found in the TLC Creative computer room.
– Troy @ TLC
2016 Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint!
I received a very exciting email Friday (standing outside the Astor New Orleans with a number of other PowerPoint MVPs) confirming Microsoft has renewed the MVP Award for contributions in PowerPoint technical communities through 2016! This will be my 15th year as an MVP for PowerPoint and I am truly excited about the award, AND about being connected to the Microsoft development team over the next year with so many great things lined up to happen in MS Office and PowerPoint!
– Troy @ TLC
The PowerPoint QAT – A Designer’s Best Tool
The Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) is one of the best options for making your design work faster, if setup properly. The PowerPoint QAT is basically a collection of the top used “buttons” always accessible without having to change tabs on the ribbon.
Setting up the QAT is fairly easy, but tedious. But Microsoft has made it very easy to leverage someone else’s effort. In this case, my effort, think of it as my gift to everyone that reads this post, and instantly setup your QAT with 37 buttons to speed up design.
Download the QAT file HERE (unzip and “PowerPoint Customizations.exportedUI”).
In PowerPoint, go to FILE > OPTIONS > QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR > IMPORT/EXPORT > IMPORT > select the downloaded file > say YES to the dialog > done.
– Troy @ TLC
Something New On My QAT
The QAT is the #1 customization and way to speed up design work. Recently, I was using another designer’s computer and discovered an amazing button for the QAT, and it is unbelievable that it was not one of the first items I added when first customizing it!
This button opens the Custom Animation Pane. I predict that this button will save me 10 hours of design time in 2016! The animation pane is something I access continuously, and going to the Animations tab and then the Animation Button takes a lot of mouse movement and, ultimately, time. Now, if I need to review the animation on a slide (not necessarily add animation, just see what is on a slide and adjust timing in the Animation Pane), I click this button no matter what tab I am on and the animation information needed is there.
To add, go to FILE > OPTIONS > QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR. In the POPULAR COMMANDS list, the 6th item down is ANIMATION PANE. Select it and click the add button to place it on your QAT.
Hopefully everyone has discovered this wonderful button and already have it on your QAT (and are now seriously wondering how good I really am at that PowerPoint program). Just sharing my experience and hopefully helping others not feel left out by not having the Animation Pane button on their QAT.
– Troy @ TLC